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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 18, 1909
Spokane, Washington – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Convicted of Conspiracy
From the Socialist Montana News of December 16, 1909:
[Part II of II.]
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Sentenced
to Three Months.
Miss Flynn, or rather Mrs. Jones in private life, was arrested while walking on the street, on the new conspiracy charge that is now being used against the Industrial Workers. She has been editing and getting out the paper, the “Industrial Worker”, since the force was arrested.
This “conspiracy” charge makes any one concerned in coming or bringing people to Spokane to test the city ordinance guilty of the crime of conspiring against the peace of the city, and the authorities are working this to the limit. They even claim that their ordinance is superior to the Washington state laws, or the United States constitution. They completely ignore the fact that no inferior jurisdiction can make a law in contradiction to its superior.
The police have been itching to get Miss Flynn. She was thrown into a cell with prostitutes, insulted by the police, who came with their vile familiarity in the night, and abused terribly by the prosecuting attorney, Pugh. She is in a pregnant condition, and the greatest fears are entertain for her safety, the first child lost owing to her overwork on the platform. Her husband, who is Missoula, is worked up to an extreme nervous tension through suspense and anxiety.
Convicted In Twenty Minutes.
The jury was out just twenty minutes that convicted her. It was composed entirely of the capitalist class, a business man, two retired farmers, a mining man, president of the Spokane Dry Goods company, and a real estate man. So easy was it to tell what the verdict would be that while they were out Miss Flynn wrote twelve telegrams to her friends stating that she had been sentenced.
Her husband is a mason and every juror was a mason, as well as the judge and prosecuting attorney, but fraternal bands signify nothing when capitalist class interests are at stake. And what sort of morality and human justice have we here? Was Mrs. Jones tried by a jury of her peers? Are men the proper persons to sentence a prospective mother to three months in jail? How long will humanity dumbly assent to such outrages?
Trial Huge Farce.
The trial for conspiracy was a huge farce. Prosecutor Pugh and the other illiterate brutes undertook to read anarchy, mob law and all that into the meaning of socialism and the red flag. The socialist songs were even put up in evidence, and the attempt was made to show that such literature was contrary to public order, and thus establish the claim of the state that the defendant was a conspirator.
Even the capitalist papers are disgusted with Pugh and call him “Thundering Pugh”. This Pugh treats Attorney Fred Moore, counsel for the I. W. W., so insultingly, that even stolid Judge Stocker forced him to apologize. The lawyers have bean near blows several times. The trial lasted two days.
The “Spokesman-Review” and the “Chronicle”, two of the Spokane papers, have been very bitter against the Industrialists all through the trouble and try by misrepresentation to influence the public against them in every way.
Free Press on Trial Also.
Miss Flynn wrote up her experiences in the jail so minutely that the police were determined the matter should not go out to the public, and confiscated the entire edition of the “Industrial Worker” as it came off the press.
In the jail Miss Flynn saw that the prostitutes were plying their trade the same inside as outside. The jailer seemed to he making dates for them. These guards mingled promiscuously with the women at all times, and there was no such thing as privacy or decent reserve. Gurley Flynn wrote this all up. No wonder the police set aside the American constitution to attack the sacred rights of this press. People may not speak nor may not print the truth.
Where Are We?
Are we in Russia, Spain, Mexico or America. Oh, just in any old capitalist land, where the parasite exploiters want the beaten and bruised exploited to keep still.
There is a hot time in the old town of Spokane all right. Feeling is running high at a white heat, and the affair is liable to end in a hanging yet. The I. W. W. are fighting a losing game. They are right ethically, but might alone makes right. The machine of capitalist organized society will roll over them. It must be [confronted] by political methods as wise and shrewd as those of the masters.
A fight like this does considerable good as an educator; that is to show to people that their so-called freedom is a farce. That there are no guaranteed rights to those who do not have political power; that this government will not do, what it says it will do.
Such a fight is excellent for developing class-consciousness in the workers themselves. It shows them where they head in at when it comes to “their country.”
Any one who can go and help this fight, should do so. If you can raise money send to Fred Heslewood, organizer I. W. W. Coeur d’Alene City, Idaho.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote EGF, Compliment IWW, IW p1, Nov 17, 1909
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v1n35-nov-17-1909-IW.pdf
Montana News
“Owned and Published for the Socialist Party of Montana”
(Helena, Montana)
-Dec 16, 1909
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024811/1909-12-16/ed-1/seq-1/
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024811/1909-12-16/ed-1/seq-4/
IMAGE
EGF, Joan of Arc, Nw Cstle Hld PA p21, Dec 17, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/105389461/
See also:
Tag: Spokane Free Speech Fight of 1909-1910
https://weneverforget.org/tag/spokane-free-speech-fight-of-1909-1910/
This is the suppressed issue of IW with article by EGF-
“Story of My Arrest and Imprisonment” by EGF, sadly difficult to read, yet well worth the effort, note that the paper has moved to Seattle:
Industrial Worker
(Seattle, Washington)
-Dec 15, 1909
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v1n39-dec-15-1909-IW.pdf
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Union Maid – Billy Bragg & Friends
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie